An Academic Resource of the Claremont Colleges
Posted in News on Feb 8th, 2012
The latest skirmish in the BFS’s war on invasive exotic plants took place Saturday, February 4, when 15 hardy volunteers attacked two patches of Italian and Bull Thistles. These two large very spiky purple-flowering thistles are native to Europe, western Asia, and north Africa. The were both introduced to North America accidentally — the Bull […]
Posted in News on Jan 4th, 2012
BFS Manager Jennifer Gee’s quail research is featured both in the New York Times and on NBC’s Rock Center with Brian Williams. Since April 2010, the New York Times has been running a blog called “Scientist at Work – Notes from the Field”. According to the NY Times website, “This blog is the modern version […]
Posted in News on Dec 7th, 2011
One of the initiatives our Interim Manager, Dr. Jennifer Gee, has undertaken this year is to produce a BFS Vegetation Management Plan, which she developed in consultation with Dr. Chris McDonald, Desert Natural Resources Advisor for the University of California Cooperative Extension, San Bernardino County. The goals of the Vegetation Management Plan are to preseve […]
Posted in News on Nov 22nd, 2011
The Claremont Colleges seek to hire a Director for the Robert J. Bernard Biological Field Station (BFS – www.bfs.claremont.edu), a natural study area adjacent to the Colleges’ campuses. The BFS comprises a diversity of habitat types, including native sage scrub, non-native grasslands and an artificial lake, which are used by undergraduate courses in ecology and […]
Posted in News, Sightings, Web Updates on Oct 8th, 2011
We have a new species addition to the BFS Bird List — the Yellow-headed Blackbird (Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus), which was spotted by Dr. Paul Stapp’s class on September 29. The brilliant yellow head makes identification of this blackbird easy, and its loud, rusty-hinge call is also quite distinctive. Yellow-headed Blackbirds occur throughout the US west of […]
Posted in News, Sightings, Web Updates on Sep 30th, 2011
Dr. Paul Stapp‘s Mammalogy from Cal State Fullerton is trapping rodents at the BFS this week and caught a Western Harvest Mouse (Reithrodontomys megalotis), in their trapping grid in the SW part of the station (near the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden). This species has not been seen at BFS since 1990, so we’re glad […]
Posted in News, Sightings, Web Updates on Sep 18th, 2011
We have a new addition to the BFS Bird List — the Sora (Porzana carolina). The Sora is a small, secretive bird of freshwater marshes and is most often found in cattails and bulrushes, where it forages for snails, small crustaceans, insects, and seeds. At the BFS it was seen foraging among the cattails between […]
Posted in News, Sightings, Web Updates on Aug 26th, 2011
Look who was spotted crossing the main east-west road yesterday evening! This new addition to our invert list is a male fall-breeding California native tarantula, Aphonopelma eutylenum – the California Ebony Tarantula. It is more accurately called Aphonopelma “eutylenum type” as this species has been described by several different validly published names. In the fall, […]
Posted in News on Jul 11th, 2011
The BFS Manager, Dr. Jennifer Gee, is featured in a New York Times article on web-based “crowd funding” of scientific research. According to the article, Dr. Gee and her collaborator, Dr. Jennifer Calkins, may have been the first professional scientists to use this approach to underwrite basic research. To raise nearly $5,000 for a pilot […]
Posted in News, Sightings, Web Updates on Jul 11th, 2011
During her regular monthly BFS bird survey on July 4, Prof. Cathy McFadden spotted a new addition to the BFS Bird List – three Eurasian Collared-Doves, Streptopelia decaocto, flying over the HMC property, possibly coming out of the old toad pool area. Originally native to India, Eurasian Collared-Doves spread into Turkey and the Balkans in […]